The following includes information that may be useful in understanding the present disclosure. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art nor material to the presently described or claimed inventions, nor that any publication or document that is specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of material handling and more specifically relates to load-transporting vehicles having a loading platform to raise the load to the level of the load-transporting vehicle.
2. Description of Related Art
Off-road vehicles in particular are very dangerous to load and off load from truck beds due to their size and weight. A small error in judgement during the loading and unloading procedure can result in damage to the equipment and serious injury to the operator.
The most common method of loading a wheeled vehicle into the cargo bed of a truck is to use a set of temporary ramps. The loading ramps are intended to allow a user to push or drive a vehicle to be transported from a ground level into the elevated cargo bed of the truck. Too often, equipment damage and serious personal injury has occurred when using such ramps, particularly when users attempt to ride their vehicles up and down the loading ramps. Factors such as uneven ground surfaces, improper ramp spacing, overly-steep ramp angles, user proximity to the vehicle during loading, etc., are attributed to having played a role in the many reported cases of damage and injury. Clearly, new systems and methods to assist the safe loading and off-loading of off-road vehicles into and from truck beds would benefit many.
Several attempts have been made to solve the above-mentioned problems such as those found in U.S. Pat. No. 8,534,981 to Bortz, which relates to a truck bed bale loader auxiliary assembly. The described truck bed bale loader auxiliary assembly includes an auxiliary assembly for attachment to a truck bed, the truck bed having pivoting bale lift arms, and the truck bed further having a hydraulic ram powered bale arm actuator, the assembly including a cargo carrying frame, left and right releasably attachable and pivoting mounts for interconnecting the cargo carrier and distal ends of the bale lift arms, and a pair of cargo leveling arms pivotally mounted to span between and interconnect the truck bed and with the cargo carrier for simultaneous and substantially parallel leveling arm motion, the leveling arm motion stabilizing the cargo carrier during pivoting motions of the bale lift arms.